Quickie Movie News for July 30, 2007

“Rush Hour 3″: Mainland China may be once again flexing its overbearing muscles by possibly banning Jackie Chan’s “Rush Hour 3″ because the plot centers around Chan and Chris Tucker’s character battling Chinese Triads in Paris. According to Variety, China thinks this is anti-Chinese. Because, you know, there aren’t really any Chinese criminals called Triads operating all around the world. Um, yeah. Yet another reason why China celebrated sending a man into space 40 years after the whole thing became passe. Good grief. If this is true, it will kill Jackie Chan’s back-end deal that was struck to make the movie in the first place.

Clint Eastwood: Has the Man with No Name retired from acting? An EW article would seem to indicate such. Or at least, Paul Haggis thinks so. Says Haggis to EW when asked if Eastwood was initially supposed to play the Tommy Lee Jones role in Haggis’ upcoming “In The Valley Of Elah”: “[Eastwood] told me from the beginning he was never gonna act in anything else. He said, ‘Well, Paul, I was in retirement, I came out of it to do Million Dollar Baby. I don’t think I can go out better, do you?’ I went, ‘Oh, damn, how can I argue with that?'” Clint is already 77 years old. Maybe retirement ain’t such a bad idea…

“The Two Coreys” TV Series: I’m interested in this series, mostly because I was a big fan of these guys back “in the day”, and I really want them to do well. It sucks when your heroes fall down and never get back up. So what do the critics think of their new show on A&E? Here’s the LA Times with their review: “There could be something interesting here. But you’d need an actual documentary to reveal it, not this jagged artifact, in which almost every situation smells of prearrangement.” Hey, “Family Jewels” with Gene Simmons is prearranged as all heck, too, and it’s still a hoot to watch. Screw the LA Times.

“The Incredible Hulk”: A new look for the Hulk was revealed (pictured right), and Edward Norton made a rather huge statement at the movie’s panel at Comic Con by saying that he wrote the screenplay for “The Incredible Hulk”. What does this mean? That he replaced Zak Penn’s script with his own? Or is he pulling the Vain Hollywood Actor routine and trying to take someone else’s work as his own? I wonder what Penn would say about this if he heard it…